Semiconductor component manufacturers are constantly striving to lower the cost of manufacturing semiconductor components while improving their electrical and thermal performance characteristics. In addition, it is desirable for the semiconductor components to be small, light weight, and have a low profile. An important type of component meeting these requirements is a surface mount semiconductor component. This type of component has been developed to improve both the electrical and thermal performance characteristics and meet the size constraints of customers.
Typically, surface mount semiconductor components are manufactured by mounting semiconductor chips on a leadframe. Die bond pads of the semiconductor chips are electrically coupled to leadframe leads. The semiconductor chips and a portion of the leadframe are encapsulated by a packaging material. The leadframe leads extend from the packaging material; therefore, these types of semiconductor components are referred to as leaded semiconductor components.
Ensuring that the leadframe leads of these types of semiconductor components are coplanar and remain coplanar during subsequent processing steps is complex and results in higher manufacturing costs. If the leadframe leads are deformed, an open failure may occur at the solder joint between the leadframe lead and the footprint during mounting. To solve these problems, some manufacturers use different types of packaging structures such as the Molded Carrier Ring (MCR) package, the Guard ring Quad Flat Package (GQFP), or the Bumper Quad Flat Package (BQFP). However, these types of packages increase the external dimensions of the semiconductor component.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a semiconductor leadframe and a cost efficient method for manufacturing a semiconductor component using the semiconductor leadframe. It would be of further advantage for the method to improve the coplanarity limitations of the leadframe leads. In addition, it would be advantageous for the semiconductor component to have a low profile and improved electrical and thermal performance characteristics over conventional surface mount semiconductor components.